JW, I need a neural network to come up with titles for the comic pages. Seriously!

I sure hope that page will give you a lot to interpret and wonder about hah~ I, for one, loved the scenery change. Forest’s lights are beautiful and cool to paint but everything gets boring after a dozen of panels. This was a refreshing change. The vision ends on the next page so it’s a rather short one. And you can probably guess what will happen next and what’s the solution to their “Ada can’t leave the camp but we need more spells” problem. Two next pages are on the Patreon, if you like.

And I’ve started watching the second season of Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata and I need to say it’s better than I expected! Lots of nonchalant fanservice but it fits the theme so it doesn’t bug me at all and a proper drama that pulls creators’ heartstrings. And it’s funny! Go watch it if you have the time!

There are 3 links to Patreon in this post. I think I’m starting to do better with that marketing thing °◡°

56 comments on “Betrayed hopes”

Beginning from the scenery change, to the panel where we see Laura only from behind stitting there up to the dialogue – its just a beautiful page.
Laura just seems so grown up in this page – its just so different then we see her normaly and that is what, at least in my eyes, makes this page even better.

But still two things that make me wonder abou this page:
1. Laura and a spear?
2. Laura and Magic?

Hey and no need to apologize for doing so much patreon advertisment – you are doing a great job there, and i can only recommend everyone to take a look, it great to see what already uploaded there and what is coming (especially the Secret work) 🙂 i am sad that i am not part of it a the moment 🙁

It’s a vision of the future. (We haven’t had any of those in a while)
As such, there are a few things that have happened since the ‘now’ situation, where she cheerfully distributed soup to the survivors.

And things are about to happen…and change.
And from the looks of it, it’ll be quite a while until these changes will be ‘for the better’.

I know thats this is a vision (and i have seen the next page).
But i never thought about Laura as someone who would fight so directly and would try out magic. Of course things change, in such a world there are always changes and they are more heavy then in a normal situation. What i wanted to say is that its great to see this side of her and in combination that Ada is the one who is listening, it just feels fantastic.

You have a neural network to come up with titles, it’s called your brain 😛

I know google has one for captioning images, but that’s not quite the same thing. At best it’d come up with something like “two girls talking” for this page.
And it’d be hard to find enough data to retrain it. (Probably hard enough to retrain it to caption drawings at all, let alone think of titles)

Can I just say how happy I am that you chose an appropriate weapon for Laura? Due to her small frame she is at a reach disadvantage anyway – and that is not even considering some demons’ extra long limbs. So to compensate she needs a weapon with as much reach as possible, like a spear.
Many authors/designers choose short weapons for short characters which seems to make sense at first glance, but crumbles once you actually imagine a fight scene…

I was guessing that using a spear effectively might not be that easy… For what it’s worth, I remember an episode of Highlander were the protagonist used a spear and that did not look easy to me.

One could argue that the demons are not wielding weapons other than their body parts and probably don’t know martial arts, so that pointing the spear in their direction and stabbing them might be a valid strategy, if there are not too many of them.

Is Laura actually that short? Isn’t she at least as “tall” as Ada, but I thought Laura might still be growing…

I think it would depend on the sort of fight you imagine.
I mean, if reach was the only consideration, everyone should have spears. And while the Greeks conquered half the world with spear-carrying phalanx, a few centuries later the Romans steamrolled everyone with mostly short-swords. (To the best of my knowledge, but I’m not a combat historian so I won’t give any guarantees on those claims :P)

Of course reach is by far not the only factor, but one of the most important. If you have to pass through an arm long “danger zone” where the enemy can already hit you before you can make contact with your weapon that obviously tips the scales in their favor. Shields or armor is what makes shorter weapons more viable because you can be relatively save while getting in close enough. Plus most weapons with high reach are either not strong enough or too unwieldy to easily use against armor effectively.
Both shields and armor aren’t something I’d expect to see in this setting though. And they wouldn’t do much against an opponent as strong as the demons anyway. Not getting hit is a better plan there.

I’m mostly talking about 1on1 combat since that seems to be the most likely situation they would encounter – maybe smaller groups that would split in some 1on1 or 2on1 situations. Army battles are something entirely different. Especially their superior tactics and defense helped the Romans there. But they too used spears – especially in earlier times.

I’m midly confused by this page. So this is a flash forward to the future/present?

I have to second previous comments that the scenere looks absolutely beautiful. I’m slightly worried about those summoning circles though, just because you can’t see anything happen doesn’t always mean nothing happend (having flashbacks to “The Prestige” movie).

Just wanted to say thanks for your awesome consistency! The story and artwork are incredible-and every Monday, no matter what-there is an update! I love that; a lot of the webcomics I read are really inconsistent in their updating, so it’s nice to have a fantastic high quality webcomic that I can rely on every Monday morning! Cheers.

I can tell this is a vision or something like that from the broken glass effect that the panels are laid out in. The clothing also helps. But I have to say at first I didn’t recognize Laura. She seems so much older and more mature, having a greater awareness of the world and the suffering and heartbreak it brings. She is obviously no longer the perky cheerful Miss Ponytails, she is something more. It’s really well done.

Thank you! Very happy to hear such words, I was afraid I only managed to confuse 90% of the readers haha, this is reassuring. I might manage to suppress the urge to explain everything for a little longer….

So, after my initial befuddlement, here are a few thoughts about this page.

This page is a really beautiful. I like your broken mirror/glass shard transitions a lot!
Though the scenery is wonderful it’s also somewhat depressing. Sunset often is… and wasteland mostly too. But you bring it across in a fantastic way. I almost feel like I’m sitting next to Laura.

In this page you mark a big point about Ada’s redder hair makes for a good contrast with her eyes, especially in the last panel. Her eyes are mesmerizing.

I like the second and last panels most. Though Laura looks very pretty in the fourth one, too.
She looks older, not necessarily in a physical but rather in an emotional way. Although she’s always been quite mature since we “met” her. I don’t know how you did it, but you did well!

There’s just one tiny thing: to me, it looks like Laura’s ear in the last panel is a little bit too far to the back. But I’m not sure if it’s actually intended as neither am I an anatomist nor have I a pet nor can I draw a decent human face. Plus animal’s ears are quite mobile. Laura might as well be holding them at a strange angle.

Now to the story.
If this is a vision, which my unperceptiveness did not catch up on as fast as I wrote my first comment, this one seems to be of the future. Interesting. Was their first vision where they caught Adam also of the future? We’ll see.

So Laura is going to have magical powers. Apparently, she needed to train a bit to make some spells work. But in contrast to a few pages back, Laura will turn out to be a useful disciple. As to her spell of “seeing the unseen”, maybe there just wasn’t anything unseen to be seen? Maybe she didn’t use the spell as it is intended and has no reason to be depressed? She used to be smiling a lot even up to that point. I hope this is just a short drop and that Laura’s going to get over it soon.

And she’s going to wield a spear. That’s not an easy weapon to use, I guess. Not using Kasper any more? I hope he’s still there though.

Are they going to plunder a museum or what? That would be a good place for Ada to get some kind of longsword too, maybe a sacred one from the crusades? Or an even older one from the tribal cultures, with magic runes on it.

Sorry. Didn’t meant to be scary! I’d just assumed the it would become clear in subsequent weeks, although I did go back to the start of the chapter and read back through in case I’d be dozy and missed something. Which I enjoyed, so it was a win-win!

Hey NI, I just thought of something important(?), will all your characters have good vision? If not how will they wear glasses? I think we saw someone w/ glasses in Rob’s flashback to when he quit his job but I’m not sure. I’m also to lazy to go back and check. ;P

Stefen wears glasses but he lost them during the last fight so he’s half blind now hehe. His assistant wore glasses too but she’d dead now so I suppose she doesn’t care. Ada and Filip should be wearing glasses for reading but they are lazy butts. Sofia wore glasses in the past but had her sight laser corrected.

To be honest glasses are extra annoying to draw and animal ears are a problem lol. I figured the simplest option would be pince-nez (glasses that stay on by pinching the bridge of your nose). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pince-nez

Okay cool. I was reading a manga the other day with a cat girl in it and she wore glasses. So one of the characters asked “how do you wear glasses if you have no human ears?” The answer was that the glasses clipped on to the sides of her hair. I thought that was an interesting way to do it, and then wondered how you did it. xD

I see 😀 Having a small chain and clip would be neat, although probably annoying to draw. But I might consider it for Stefen’s next glasses (cause he’s going to need some haha) so thanks for sharing that idea!

There’s circumstances where it makes sense not to change clothes throughout an adventure. (Predominantly not having another set of clothes.)
And of course in high-school anime they’re typically in uniform.
And then you have some anime acknowledge the absurdity by showing a character picking his clothes for the day from a closet full of identical clothes.

On the other hand, it facilitates character recognition, and the clothing is hardly ever the point of the story. (No more then showing them go to the toilet. How realistic is it that they never do that? Especially in cases where you really ought to wonder how they would. But maybe I don’t really want to know.)

I only once wondered about the toilet problem and the author didn’t address it. Two characters were sitting in a small cave/enclave, they couldn’t get out, there was barely space for the two of them and they were like this for an extended period of time. Makes you wonder, right?… I was pretty disappointed that the characters didn’t see it as a problem but eh, book was excellent anyhow.

Clothing is not usually something I pay much attention to but in situation were two characters get wet/dirty and after a moment they are yet again in the same clothes and it just jumps at me as an error (especially if those are not their school uniforms). In other cases it’s just lazy and I don’t care, I’m used to it. I wish I could remember the title but there’s no way… It wasn’t all that important heh.

I try harder in Replay because I know (and was told) that I’m lazy when it comes to clothes design. And that’s true! I don’t care much in real life and I tend to care even less in the comic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And when I write? They could be all running naked and you wouldn’t know. There’s just no mention of the clothing lol.

but in situation were two characters get wet/dirty and after a moment they are yet again in the same clothes and it just jumps at me as an error

Yeah, you used to see that a lot in movies/tv-series, wet one minute dry the next. I think they’ve gotten a bit better at continuity (I think they even hire people to do continuity checks these days).

And when I write? They could be all running naked and you wouldn’t know.

Heh. I’ll keep that in mind next time I read a book that neglects to elaborate on that aspect.
It’d be funny when a book gets turned into a movie, if at some point in the later stages of planning when costumes come up the author says “Costumes? I never mentioned any clothing in the book, they’re all running around naked”. I hope they pick some good looking actors and actresses 😛